


Dreams of the Dark

by linndechir



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Cinematic Universe
Genre: Getting Together, Guilt, Immersion Therapy, M/M, Nightmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Shower Sex, Wall Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-19
Updated: 2017-08-19
Packaged: 2018-12-16 08:42:41
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11825139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linndechir/pseuds/linndechir
Summary: Superman, the beacon of light and hope, illuminating the darkness for mankind, and finding no such light for himself. Part of Bruce wanted to appreciate the irony, but all he saw was the suffocating fear in those bright blue eyes. Bruce knew fear better than anyone else. He didn't feel like laughing about it.





	Dreams of the Dark

**Author's Note:**

  * For [thedevilchicken](https://archiveofourown.org/users/thedevilchicken/gifts).



“It's beautiful.”

Superman was standing by the window, looking out over the early morning fog rising over the lake. Only he wasn't Superman, and he wasn't quite Clark Kent either. He was wearing Clark Kent's clothes, brown slacks and an ill-fitting, loose shirt that couldn't hide that he was a big man, but certainly hid that he was all muscle. But Kent's glasses were missing, and while his hair wasn't slicked back as neatly as Superman's, it also lacked the tousled curliness Bruce had seen on pictures more often than in reality.

The man standing in his home, unannounced and uninvited at seven in the morning, was a strange creature somewhere in between. It didn't surprise Bruce that this creature should exist – the real Bruce also lived somewhere between Bruce Wayne and Batman, because he'd never quite managed to turn himself entirely into the Bat and nothing but him, and Bruce knew all about shifting faces between too many masks. What irritated him was that, even months after Superman had returned from the grave, Bruce still wasn't entirely sure which parts of him were real. If any of them were. Or more likely, if all of them were and Bruce just failed to see how they fit together.

He said nothing.

“Somehow it's not how I'd imagined your home,” Clark said thoughtfully, his eyes still on the lake.

“No?” Bruce prompted when no further explanation came.

“No. I imagined a penthouse, high above the city, where you could see Gotham day and night. But I suppose it makes sense that you'd need a more secluded place. Still, I expected something … gloomier.”

“Like an old manor?”

At that Clark finally looked away from the lake and at Bruce, and Bruce realised he'd said the wrong thing the moment he saw the sympathy on Clark's face, the apology forming on his lips. He didn't know if Clark had only seen the ruin on his way here or if he'd read any of the countless articles that had been written about the fire all those years ago, about the tragic accident that had cost the life of Bruce Wayne's youngest son … Either way, Bruce didn't want to listen to Clark's apologies or his pity.

“I don't believe you came here this early in the morning to talk about my interior decorating,” he said.

Clark's expression didn't change, but apparently even Superman could take a hint.

“No, I'm fairly certain I'd have to talk to Mr Pennyworth about that anyway.” He paused, a smile flashing over his lips, and when he continued, that apologetic tone Bruce had dreaded sneaked into his voice, “I checked whether you were already up, you know? I heard you moving about, or else I wouldn't have come.”

“Still, not already,” Bruce corrected. He forced down the unease he felt about Clark being able to hear where he was, while floating somewhere high above the house, or even while sitting at home in Metropolis, probably even while saving a child from a raging storm at the other end of the world if he set his mind to it. He doubted he'd ever be comfortable with the extent of Superman's powers, but Superman's powers couldn't be checked or controlled. The only options were trusting him not to abuse them or killing him, and he was no longer willing to do the latter.

Clark studied him, the question obvious in his eyes – why Bruce was wearing a three-piece suit if he'd only recently come back from patrol. The answer was an early board meeting even Bruce Wayne didn't want to miss, but Bruce didn't owe Superman any justifications about his whereabouts and his schedule on top of everything else he already knew.

When he realised that Bruce wasn't going to be forthcoming with any explanations, Clark turned towards the windows again. There was a look of almost childlike awe on his face as he watched the morning sun reflect on the gently purling surface, brighter and brighter as the fog lifted. He looked like he'd never seen anything like it before, and although Bruce himself rather liked the sight – there was a reason he'd picked this of all spots on the estate after the manor had burnt down – it struck him as odd that it could hold the attention of a man who could fly anywhere on earth and even beyond in a matter of seconds, if he felt like it.

“So, what is it you want?” Bruce asked when Clark still didn't explain himself. He had a little time left before the meeting, and his curiosity had been roused. It was rare for Clark to come and see him uninvited, and then he tended to look for the Bat while he was out in Gotham's streets. He didn't drop by Bruce's house as if they were friends. They rarely spoke unless it was related to missions, and even then they both turned to Diana more often than to each other. Maybe Clark had forgiven him for – maybe he was willing to let the past rest, but that didn't mean he was keen to spend his hours around a man who'd tried to kill him. Bruce didn't expect his forgiveness, and yet he was prepared to keep working to earn it. However, Clark showing up at his house early in the morning for a chat hadn't been what he'd envisioned.

“It's so bright here,” Clark said softly, like that was any answer at all, but then he visibly pulled himself together and faced Bruce. “Things never used to be entirely dark for me unless I wanted them to. I could always see something, usually more than I cared to. Until –“

He looked painfully young when he averted his eyes. Thirty-three, and Bruce only knew that because he'd read up on him. He would have thought him younger still. For all his frowns and the strength in his voice when he was _Superman_ , there was still so much uncertainty in those blue eyes. So much doubt. Bruce was familiar enough with both. 

Clark had refused to speak much about how exactly he'd come back to life, but he'd said enough that Bruce knew it had been a gradual process. That he'd awoken in his grave, not merely weak as a human, but weaker still, a body that didn't need to breathe trapped in an airless, dark coffin while cells knitted themselves together, a slow healing process that fixed his body before it gave him back enough of his powers for him to claw his way out of the grave.

“How long?” Bruce asked. Whatever unspoken agreement they'd had not to mention this was hardly valid anymore if Clark was the one to bring it up.

“Weeks?” Clark swallowed. His right hand clenched into a fist, a disturbingly unconscious gesture when that fist could bend steel. “I'm not sure. There was no way to tell.”

Bruce had been buried alive before, both as an exercise and involuntarily, but for the simple reason that he'd had to escape before he suffocated, it had never been for particularly long. And he'd always known how to escape. Weeks in a coffin without knowing whether he'd ever be able to escape seemed like a rare kind of torture. 

“Why are you telling me this?” 

Why not his mother, whom he seemed to love every bit as much as she loved him? Why not Lois Lane, who was still his friend even if Clark hadn't moved back in with her? Why not Diana, who had more kindness and understanding in her than Bruce could muster on his best day? 

“You like the dark.” Clark smiled a little, cocked his head to the side. Maybe he thought it odd to say those words to Bruce Wayne, a man usually seen in blinding flashlights, rather than the Bat. “You're at home in it, like it's nothing to fear. Right now I envy you that. I barely want to close my eyes anymore.”

Bruce found a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth, a dark, mirthless thing that still caused Clark to frown like he wasn't sure if he was being made fun of. Superman, the beacon of light and hope, illuminating the darkness for mankind, finding no such light for himself. Part of Bruce wanted to appreciate the irony, but all he saw was the suffocating fear in those bright blue eyes. Bruce knew fear better than anyone else. He didn't feel like laughing about it.

“I have a meeting to go to,” he said, because he didn't know what else to offer Clark. It was the wrong thing to say of course, when everyone knew how cavalier Bruce Wayne was about his obligations – the fact that it was true for once didn't make it sound less like a cheap excuse to escape a conversation he didn't want to be having.

Clark looked disappointed. It wasn't the first time, and it wouldn't be the last.

“Of course,” he just said, too accepting, too polite. He looked lost, a farmboy from Kansas with nightmares he wasn't ready for, and the fact that he flew out of the window rather than leave through the front door didn't change that.

* 

Clark's eyes were wide when he hovered above the water of the Cave, right next to where Bruce had stopped the Car. He'd tried to ask questions when Bruce had all but ordered him to come along after tonight's mission, but the nice thing about the Bat was that he didn't answer to anyone, and that included a very confused looking Superman.

They hadn't spoken again since that morning in the lake house, and Bruce couldn't blame Clark for that. After all he'd hardly made himself seem helpful and approachable. Not that he was. And yet – he knew more about fear than most people he'd met in his life, certainly more than Martha Kent or Lois Lane or Diana of Themyscira, or any of the other kind and gentle and helpful people Clark had in his life. He knew fear like he knew himself, the way it crawled into every cell, every vein, every nerve, the way it wore you down until you started gnawing yourself raw. The way it ate you from the inside out until there was nothing left but it, still hungry, still burrowing its teeth into anything it could find.

Clark had looked young that day, or maybe he had simply reminded Bruce of himself when he'd been a boy. Looking at him now, Bruce briefly considered taking off the cowl, but it wasn't Bruce Wayne that knew how to vanquish fear. It was the Bat.

“Why are we here, Bruce?” Clark asked. He hadn't moved, still hovered there the way other people leant casually against walls, but his eyes followed Bruce when he strode up the stairs of the mezzanine. Only Clark called him so stubbornly by his first name even when he was in the Suit.

Bruce didn't answer him, only retrieved what he needed from the safe and came back down. 

“Come along,” he growled and set off through the ankle-deep water, through the large cavern that held more of his vehicle prototypes. Clark followed him, still floating rather than stepping into the water.

“Where are we going?” he asked, but despite Bruce's lack of an answer, he followed him. Trusting, almost, in the lair of a man who'd tried to kill him. Trusting, as if Bruce deserved to be trusted.

The caverns became gradually darker as they ventured deeper down. Bruce knew them like the back of his hand, could navigate them even in complete darkness, and yet he wondered what they looked like to Superman's eyes. His X-ray vision must have allowed him to see through the walls, and while Bruce wasn't entirely sure how powerful Clark's normal eyesight was, he imagined that the last bit of light falling in from the upper caverns allowed him to see far more than the human eye could in the dim light.

As the caves became darker still, and more constricting, Bruce heard a soft splash when Clark stepped down into the water. He didn't move any further, so Bruce stopped as well and turned towards him.

“You said I'm at home in the dark.” Bruce's eyes were open, but they saw nothing down here. Blind as a bat, he thought with a grim smile. “I used to be terrified of it.”

“You? I find that hard to believe.” Bruce could feel Clark move next to him, stepping just a fraction closer. “You don't seem afraid of anything.”

Bruce almost wanted to laugh about that.

“I've learnt to control my fears. That's not the same as not having them.” 

Part of him had been terrified of facing Superman, too, but it had only been a small part of him. Looking back, he realised it was because he hadn't planned to come home from that fight. Fear was for the living. A dead man had nothing to fear, and a fearless man was as good as dead.

“If you don't control your fears, they paralyse you. Bad enough that they rob you of your sleep at night, but they make you just as powerless when you're awake.”

“How do you know I –” Clark started, and then interrupted himself when he understood that Bruce hadn't been talking about him. His voice was a soft whisper in the dark. “What is it you're afraid of now?”

Bruce scoffed at the magnitude of that question, and refused to let himself consider it now.

“We're not here because of my fears, Clark.”

He stepped closer until he could feel the warmth of Clark's body in front of him. He didn't need to see him to know where he was, to gauge their height difference when he raised the lead-reinforced blindfold and put it around Clark's head.

“Bruce, I can see through – oh.”

Bruce's own senses felt heightened in the dark, and he could hear how shallow Clark's breathing was already becoming. He put his hand around Clark's wrist to guide him further down the narrow corridor. For a moment Clark didn't move at all, and trying to force him was like trying to drag a mountain, but then he made two hesitant steps to follow Bruce. He almost stumbled a little, the lack of balance disturbingly human.

“If you were going to blindfold me, there was no need to take me down here,” Clark pointed out – clinging to rational arguments to distract himself from the sheer terror creeping into his mind. Bruce was all too familiar with that.

“Not quite the same psychological effect,” Bruce replied. He only led him far enough that he – and presumably Clark – could feel the harsh stone around them, brushing against both their shoulders and forcing Bruce at least to duck his head a little. Even to Bruce it felt a little claustrophobic. 

When he let go of Clark's wrist, pain seared through his own forearm, and it took him a moment to realise that Clark had grabbed him hard enough to bruise him through the kevlar. He weighed the lead-lined coffer in his other hand, envisioned the green glow of the Kryptonite he'd brought for this very purpose, but decided against opening it. Fighting one's fear was all about self-control, not about punishment.

“Let go,” he ordered, only just managing to keep the pain out of his voice.

“Sorry.” Clark loosened his grip, but he kept holding on to Bruce's arm, didn't even let go when Bruce's gloved fingers clasped Clark's wrist again. “What is this, Bruce? Some kind of test to see if I'm really scared?”

“I believe you.” Bruce let out a slow breath, more loudly than he usually would. Further down the caves, he heard the fluttering of leathery wings. His heartbeat spiked for a second, but he was calm enough that he could simply observe that fact about himself. “The only way to defeat your fears is by facing them. If you're afraid of heights, you climb a mountain. If you're afraid of spiders, you touch one. If you're afraid of the darkness –“

“– you spend a night in the Bat's creepy underground lair?” Clark asked with a nervous laugh. But when it faded, his breathing was starting to sync with Bruce's own, slow and deep, even if it sounded laboured.

“In my experience, one night rarely does the trick.”

Clark didn't say anything to that, he seemed to need his entire concentration to stay calm. Occasionally his fingers twitched on Bruce's arm, as if he had to remind himself to keep his grip light – or at least light enough not to crush Bruce's bones. Bruce tried to run through the likelihood that Clark would in fact break his arm before this was over, but since his experience with a traumatised Kryptonian who was scared of the dark was rather limited, his calculations weren't conclusive. He wasn't even entirely sure if trauma and phobias affected a Kryptonian mind in the same way as a human's.

“Can you keep talking to me?” Clark asked quietly. His voice shook a little, fear mixed with shame, and that too Bruce understood too well. It was hard enough for any man to admit his fears, and even more so to someone who'd once been an enemy. Someone who could exploit those fears.

“About what?” The Bat wasn't particularly talkative, and the kinds of things that Bruce Wayne liked to talk about … Bruce couldn't bring himself to say any of those while wearing the Suit. Even if it might have cheered Clark up.

“Bat things?” Clark said. His laugh had that nervous, too tense quality of fear still biting into him. Bruce remembered all the nights he had spent down here as a boy, trying to make himself be less afraid, of the darkness and of the distant sound of the bats, shaking and shivering in the cold until Alfred had come for him.

“Did you know that adult bats wrap their young in their wings to keep them warm?” he asked.

Dick had told him that once, when he'd still been a little boy, and even shown Bruce pictures to demonstrate that bats were “adorable”. This time Clark's laugh sounded a bit more relaxed.

“I'm going to think about that now every time I see you, I hope you know that.”

Bruce let thirty minutes pass before he took pity on Clark's pointedly slow breathing, thirty minutes of the occasional comment between longer stretches of silence because Clark needed to get used to that, too. He didn't let go of his hand, though, kept holding on to his wrist. One fix point to focus on in the darkness. 

When they returned to the main part of the Cave, Bruce blinking slowly while his eyes adjusted to the light again, Clark was drenched with sweat. The Kryptonian fabric of his suit seemed to absorb the moisture somehow – on another day Bruce would have asked how – but Clark's hair was curling into his forehead, and his face was gleaming wetly.

“You need a shower.” He pulled off his cowl on the way to the Cave's bathroom. Clark still had something slightly shell-shocked about him when he followed, his eyes so very wide, his motions almost mechanical. While Bruce picked out a towel and turned on the hot spray, Clark's fingers brushed over the crest on his chest and the suit all but melted open, like scales folding themselves up to let him slip out of it easily. He wasn't wearing anything underneath, and for a moment Bruce's eyes caught on Clark's bare, smooth skin.

He was flawless. Not merely the perfect definition of his muscles – Bruce had seen that before, it wasn't as if Clark's suit left much to the imagination. But his skin was literally free of any blemishes – of bruises or moles or any of the other irregularities even the most perfect human skin showed. Free of scars, too, as if he'd never been hurt in even the slightest way.

The spray of the shower was wide enough that it already fell over Clark's shoulder, got on Bruce's glove too when he reached out almost involuntarily and touched his fingers to Clark's chest. He hadn't expected the black hair somehow, but he barely noticed it when his focus was on the unmarred skin right where that gigantic claw had pierced Clark's torso. Bruce bore the marks of countless fights on his skin, his bones, his joints. There should have been _something_ there.

His glove was designed to let him retain as much sensation as anyhow possible, so he could feel Clark's slightly accelerated heartbeat under his fingertips. Or maybe that was a normal Kryptonian heartbeat, after all Bruce had no reference value. But that look in Clark's eyes wasn't normal, nor was Clark coming to him for help, or Clark shaking in the dark like part of him expected to find himself trapped again. There might not be any scars, but what Clark had done that day, and what Bruce had done to him, had left a different kind of mark. The kind that healed far more slowly than flesh and bone.

“Bruce,” Clark said, and then his hand covered Bruce's, kept it pressed close to his chest, even pulled him in. He didn't take his eyes off Bruce, and Bruce could all too easily imagine the thoughts going through Clark's mind now. He'd done stupider things in his life with adrenaline coursing through his veins than what Clark was about to do. And he'd always ended up regretting them.

When Bruce tried to pull back his hand and step backwards, Clark didn't yield immediately, but after a few moments he let him go. 

*

One night became another, and yet another, became a habit almost. Bruce told himself that he didn't have time to keep Clark company, that he should simply send him down into his personal nightmare to learn how to deal with it. After all, that was the entire point of this – to flood his senses with what he was afraid of, to make him sit through it again and again until the realisation that nothing bad was going to happen, that he wasn't trapped underground again, won out over the irrational fear that stung behind his eyes.

But Bruce had spent enough nights alone with his fears and his doubts and his guilt not to wish the same on Clark – not when he couldn't help but wonder if he hadn't contributed to this. Not to Clark's fear of the dark, no, but to having taught him how to fear at all. So he used the time in the dark for his own meditations, clearing his head, keeping his breathing so very steady and in time with Clark's. He remained quiet for longer and longer, until he felt more than heard the shudders next to him, the quiet, desperate gasps, and only then would he put his hands on Clark again. On his wrist, most of the time. On his shoulder, that one night when he'd been standing behind Clark. 

Clark let out a shuddering gasp, and then breathed in slowly when Bruce's gloved hand slid up to the side of his neck. He could faintly feel Clark's pulse under his index finger, a panicked thunder rushing through his veins.

“Breathe,” he said. It was his own voice – neither the Bat's nor Bruce Wayne's, but that rough timbre barely anyone but Alfred got to hear, Alfred and Dick and Diana. Most of the time when Clark was here, he came as Superman, and most of the time he came so late that Bruce had only just returned from patrol, still suited up, but uncowled. He'd failed to take it into consideration that first night, that the Bat's voice must conjure up a different kind of unpleasant memory for Clark, but ever since he'd remember to switch off the voice modulator at least. And _Bruce's_ voice Clark almost seemed to like. 

His heartbeat slowed underneath Bruce's fingertips, a desperate sprint calming down to a relaxed jog, then a slow walk. Neatly synchronising itself with Bruce's own heartbeat again, and Bruce had realised over the past weeks that Clark could _hear_ his heartbeat.

He was about to pull away – mission accomplished, and this wasn't for his benefit – when Clark took his hand, his grip unrelenting and firm as he guided Bruce's hand to his throat. Different gloves than during their fight, and Clark had barely been conscious at that particular moment, but the similiarity couldn't have been lost on him. Once again it occurred to Bruce that the darkness of a coffin he couldn't escape wasn't the only thing that had to make Superman wake up in tears and terror.

“What are you afraid of, Bruce?” Clark asked, his throat moving under Bruce's palm. Warm and alive, a second chance Bruce had never deserved. He wanted to deflect, like he had that first night, or maybe tell him about the bats of his nightmares as if they hadn't become about so much more than the animals that had frightened him as a boy, but if there was anyone in this world to whom he owed a modicum of honesty, it was the man he'd almost broken his last rule for.

“Failure,” he said quietly. “To protect Gotham, to protect the world the next time it will be necessary.”

To protect Dick, when he'd already had to bury one son, but that much honesty he didn't even owe to Clark Kent.

“Only you would put the weight of that on your shoulders,” Clark said. There was something in his voice that almost sounded like admiration, but Bruce put that on the cave walls distorting sound.

“You don't?” he asked.

“I tried. It never really worked out the way I imagined.”

Bruce let out a harsh bout of laughter, felt Clark's throat move under his hand as well.

They went back upstairs in silence. Alfred had left tea for them on Bruce's desk, but he tended to make himself scarce when Clark was here. Bruce wasn't entirely sure if that was his version of sticking them into a room until they made up. Alfred stayed out of the Cave while Clark went to shower – he was rarely as sweat-drenched anymore as he'd been those first nights, but it had become a habit that seemed to calm him down – and he still stayed away while Clark spent an hour or two sitting by Bruce's side, dressed in borrowed clothes because he rarely wanted to put the suit back on. Sometimes Clark merely watched Bruce work – checking security footage, reading police reports, tinkering with various pieces of equipment – and sometimes he offered a helping hand, or rather eye, when Bruce had more footage to scan than he cared for. Sometimes they talked, or rather Clark talked. About an article he was writing for the Planet, about a funny anecdote a coworker had told him at the office, about his childhood in Kansas or the years he'd spent travelling the world.

Bruce wondered more than once if Clark was still trying to convince him of his humanity – the old trick when dealing with kidnappers, talking about your life to remind them you were a human being and not only a target. He didn't ask. If the answer was yes, Bruce certainly deserved it. After all he'd been the one who'd failed to do his research on _whom_ he was fighting, too focused on _how_ to fight him.

And the truth was, he didn't mind listening to Clark any more than he minded having Diana in the Cave. Clark in a borrowed black t-shirt that was a little loose around the shoulders, and in all his calculations and plannings Bruce had somehow never expected Superman to be shorter than him. Clark in borrowed sweatpants that bunched around the ankles, bare feet on the cold floor and not minding one bit, Clark nursing a cup of tea and munching away at Alfred's sandwiches and thanking Bruce for them as politely as if Bruce had made them himself.

It was a different antidote to Bruce's nightmares than what he was offering Clark. The Superman of his nightmares – irrational, but so very persistent – was all thunder and rage, gleaming red eyes and cruel hands that tore into Bruce, ripped him open and found new ways to hurt him every night. And then there were the other nightmares, worse still, of ashen skin pulled taught over that chiselled face, a gruesome hole smoking in his ruined chest, a wooden coffin lowered into the earth by people who'd known him, loved him. People who had a right to mourn him.

This Clark was overwhelmingly human, and breathtakingly alive. That wasn't to say that Bruce always liked him – the farmboy schtick grated on his nerves at times, because there was only so often he could hear about the beauty of a Kansas sunset before he felt the urge to walk out and find himself a Gotham rooftop, and it hadn't taken long for Clark to start commenting on Bruce's missions, on his plans and his patrols, questioning his methods. Bruce didn't take that well from anyone. He didn't think that Clark was aware that Bruce would have thrown anyone else out of his Cave for getting on his nerves that much.

That night Clark stopped mid-stride on his way to the shower – he knew the way by now, knew where the towels and the spare clothes were kept and helped himself to them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. It left an ache in Bruce's chest when he thought of the last time he had welcomed someone into his life, only to lose him again.

He looked away, but even blue Clark's eyes pierced him to the bone.

“Bruce.” He didn't say it like he expected an answer, but like that was all he needed to say. Bruce wanted to turn away, to get to work while he tried not to listen to the sound of water flowing over smooth planes of muscle, but Clark looked so intent, and still always so troubled whenever he stepped back into the light, like keeping his mind in check had drained all his strength from him. Bruce knew that feeling all too well, and he knew how few things could take one's mind from that bone-deep exhaustion.

He wasn't good enough at lying to himself to pretend that he was merely doing Clark a favour when he followed him towards the shower.

This time he let himself watch as Clark peeled himself out of his suit. Bruce had put it under the microscope more than a few times, trying to figure out how exactly it worked, and come to the frustrating realisation that he simply didn't understand enough about Kryptonian technology to understand the mechanism. Right now the suit was the last thing on his mind.

Clark's hand felt too hot through his gloved wrist when he pulled him closer and turned on the water at the same time, and Bruce considered it fortunate that his entire equipment was designed to withstand Gotham's almost constant rain.

“Are you sure –” he started, and Clark laughed at him, too loud and too tense.

“No.” He yanked Bruce closer with an ease that set made the hair rise on the back of his neck, every muscle in his body screaming _danger_ , his brain instinctively running through quick calculations of how to get out of here, how long he'd need back to the coffer with the kryptonite – as if he'd had any real chance to escape that simple grip on his wrist unless Clark allowed him to.

He smashed Bruce back against the dark tiles, crowding him back against them as if he wasn't naked and several inches shorter than him. The water had drenched Bruce's hair already, tickled as it ran down his neck. Clark looked nothing like he did in Bruce's nightmares, his hair a disarray of curls, the full curve of his lips gleaming wetly, his eyes filled with that hungry, fearful need of a man who more than anything needed to remind himself he was still – again – alive.

He grabbed Bruce's hair almost brutally before he kissed him, both his hands keeping Bruce's head in an iron grip that should have added some new fears to the old ones, but all it did was make Bruce unbearably hard in his body armour. When he put his hands on Clark's chest, on skin and flesh that felt as soft and human and fragile as any human's, Clark gasped into the kiss.

“You had to touch me all this time,” he growled in frustration, teeth nipping sharply at Bruce's bottom lip.

“You asked me to,” Bruce snarled back, and that too made Clark press harder against him. And, oh, Bruce knew better than anyone how oddly wired a brain could become in its fear and its even more desperate attempts to rid itself from it. “Just like you asked me to talk to you.”

“I didn't think it would –”

Bruce only took mercy on him and didn't remind him that Clark had almost dragged him with him into the shower that very first night because Clark was kissing him again, hard and hungry. His hand roamed over Bruce's armoured chest, then slid to one of the clasps.

“How long do you need to get out of that suit?”

“It's easier when it's not wet,” Bruce said and allowed himself a brief smirk at Clark's irritated glare.

“Show me.”

It should have taken the desperate urgency out of this, to guide Clark's hands to the various clasps and buckles, and yet having Clark's hand slide over every armoured inch of his body, following his silent instruction to discard the Suit piece by piece, had quite the opposite effect. Bruce breathed in sharply when Clark sank to his knees to take off his boots. The underarmour clung soaked to Bruce's chest and arms, to his groin, too, and Clark seemed to have to force himself to tear his gaze away and get back to his feet. 

It should have bothered Bruce, to let the Bat's protections be taken away from him, baring himself in more ways than one even before Clark's fingers dug into the tight fabric of the underarmour and tore it open ever so slowly. For a moment the memory of Clark's hand pushing into his chest flashed through Bruce's mind – but no, it was his nightmare, not a real memory, unlike any of the things he'd put Clark through.

His breath still came too fast, and Clark caught it between his lips, swallowed Bruce's gasps and then his moans while his hands yanked the wet fabric off him. His hand stopped on the large burn scar on Bruce's shoulder, and then he made a step backwards and merely _stared_.

Bruce avoided his gaze. There was a simple reason he preferred to do this in the dark these days, or to keep his shirt on as if Bruce Wayne couldn't even be bothered to undress for the people he took to bed. At least he didn't have to lie to Clark about where he his scars came from, but he didn't want his sympathy either.

But the look in Clark's eyes wasn't exactly pity – it was fascination more than anything, and he touched Bruce's scars as incredulously as Bruce had touched the unmarred skin of his chest.

“Are any of those – did I leave any of those?” he asked so quietly the words almost got lost under the spray of the water. Bruce almost laughed. He did have a scar from that day – the knife wound in his shoulder from one of Lex's goons – and he'd had an almost inexhaustible reserve of bruises and breaks that had taken months to heal fully, but Clark had only marked him on the inside, bone fractures and muscle tears and a crushing fear in his heart, and then most unfamiliar of all, a fresh breath of hope. Of faith. 

“You did far more to me than that,” Bruce growled against Clark's lips.

He used Clark's momentary confusion to reverse their positions, grabbing his shoulders to push Clark back against the wall, and although he was under no illusion that he could only move Clark because there was no resistance, it still sent a thrill through him to manhandle him so easily, to look down into those serious blue eyes that cared too much.

“Then it only seems fair that I should help you with that,” Clark said, so earnest, so trusting. He touched Bruce's cheek almost too gently. “After you've helped me.”

Under the shower Clark almost looked like he had in the rain that night, his hair curling, his lips flushed, his cheekbones so sharp that he barely looked real. Superhuman. More than human, better. More than Bruce should be allowed to touch. And yet he'd seen him shiver and sweat and shake and cling to him in that most human of fears. Clark had picked him for that, and not any of the people who loved him. Any of the people _he_ loved. Bruce understood that, too. Some things one could only show to a stranger. Sometimes the only people to whom one could bear one's darkness were people whose opinion didn't matter.

Clark's hand slid from his hand to his shoulder to grab him hard when Bruce suddenly lifted him and pushed him back up against the wall. He was heavy, but Bruce had lifted and carried him before, and that had been without the help of Clark's legs tightening around his hips to hold on to him.

And maybe he was showing off, or maybe he was desperate to be in control, of this, of Clark, of himself, but he didn't think too hard about any of that when Clark kissed him again. He held on to Bruce's hair like he had to worry about Bruce pulling away otherwise, but his lips were far more tender than his hands. He bit Bruce, but even that was slow and lingering, as if he wanted Bruce to savour every second of it.

It was a little awkward, to hold him up and still touch him, to keep his balance on the slippery tiles, but he didn't want to let go of him, didn't want to let him down and do this any easier way when he could have Clark just like this – shaking legs around his hips, twitching and squirming and desperately trying to grind down against him when Bruce finally pushed into him. And he thought he'd heard every possible sound from Clark's lips – the grunts and whimpers during their fight, the soft gasps when he'd been falling apart by his side in the dark – but he wasn't prepared for the low, deep moan that started in Clark's chest and ended between Bruce's lips. Wasn't prepared either for the way Clark tensed around him or the way he kissed him as if he could only breathe from Bruce's lungs.

Bruce knew he wasn't being careful or gentle, but then he didn't need to worry about injuring him, and Clark drank up every touch as if nobody had touched him since he'd clawed himself out of that darkness. He shuddered every time Bruce thrust into him, held on to Bruce's hair so tightly might have ripped it out if Bruce had tried to turn his head. His breath was coming in irregular gasps, and his eyes stared at Bruce's face with an intensity that almost made him uncomfortable. 

Bruce slowed down a little, adjusted his grip on Clark's thighs before he pushed into him again. His next kiss was but a whisper against Clark's lips.

“Breathe,” he growled, voice so low he himself felt it more than he heard it, and Clark's cock twitched against his stomach.

“Damn your voice,” Clark said quietly and let his head thump back against the tiles, hard enough that Bruce heard one of them crack. Clark didn't seem to notice. His hands were roaming over Bruce's shoulders now, digging hard into his tense muscles. Bruce leant in to kiss Clark's gleaming, bared throat, licked over his racing pulse.

“We should have done this, ah, down there, in the dark,” Clark gasped when Bruce pulled half out of him, made him wait for it before he thrust back in. He was bruising Bruce's shoulders, though Bruce doubted he was even aware of it. He had no intentions of telling him, not when that low, dull pain made his nerves tingle with want.

“Don't think you would have been in the mood down there,” Bruce replied, the words muffled against Clark's throat and by the patter of water on the tiles and on their skin, but then Clark could have heard him even if he'd been all the way over in Metropolis.

“I would, with you there.” It didn't sound like a confession, or like anything meaningful at all, but it still made Bruce groan against Clark's throat, made him slam into him so hard that another tile cracked under Clark's back. Clark looked down then to meet Bruce's eyes, pressed his parted lips against Bruce's in something that could have been a kiss if either of them had had enough breath in their lungs for that. 

Bruce needed both his hands to hold up Clark's weight, and he almost regretted not being able to touch him more until he realised that he didn't need to, that this was all it took to make Clark come with another one of those deep, shaky moans. And he didn't quiet down when Bruce kept fucking him, desperate and impatient and still a little incredulous that Clark was letting him, that all Clark did was hold on to him with bruising force and kiss him so hard that Bruce tasted blood in his mouth when he came.

The water was starting to feel too hot on his skin by the time he let Clark back down on his feet and made a step away from him. Clark almost looked as if nothing had happened – the water was washing sweat and come off them before it could even begin to cling to their skin, and while Bruce already felt bruises on his skin, Clark's was as flawless as ever. He did look somewhat sheepish.

“I think I broke your shower,” he said. Bruce let out a disbelieving laugh.

“I think I can afford a few new tiles.”

Clark smiled for a moment, then turned off the water and stepped closer to Bruce again. Touched his shoulder with careful fingers, gingerly retracing the imprints they had left there just minutes earlier, then leant in to kiss them softly. 

“I'm not usually this careless,” he said quietly. The apology in his voice made Bruce wince more than the bruises did. Pain hadn't given him nightmares in decades, and it had never been the fact that the Superman of his dreams had _hurt_ him that had tormented him. 

“I'd say there were mitigating circumstances,” he said. Clark gave him a hesitant smile. 

“Don't start being generous, Bruce, it's confusing.”

Bruce laughed about that as if Clark hadn't made him want to be a better man by doing nothing at all but being who he was. As if he didn't have more to make up for to him than he'd ever be able to in his life. He turned away from him and grabbed a towel to bury his face in.

“I have work to do,” he said once he was sure that his expression wouldn't betray anything Clark might feel the urge to comment on. 

Clark still just stood there, wet and naked and too damn perfect, and alive. For a moment he looked disappointed, but instead of merely withdrawing, like he had that very first morning he'd come to see Bruce, he crossed the distance between them. His fingertips were warm when he brushed them gently over Bruce's spine, from the nape of his neck downwards. 

“Do you mind if I stay?” he asked, hesitantly like he hadn't stayed every other time he'd been here. Bruce wanted to tell him off – there was only so long he could bear the gentleness in those blue eyes for one day, and he doubted being around Clark would become any easier after this. But if he sent him away now, who knew if Clark would come back the next time he needed Bruce's help? He didn't deserve that any more than he'd deserved any of Bruce's other mistakes. 

He didn't say any of that. What he said was, “I can't very well eat all of Alfred's sandwiches on my own,” and he looked away when Clark smiled at him with something that was far too close to gratitude. To trust even. As if he'd found some kind of glimmer to guide him in the dark. Bruce grimaced at the ridiculousness of that thought, didn't let himself ponder on it any further while he got dressed and went back to his desk.

But it didn't bother him to have Clark join him there, barefoot and relaxed and smiling when he asked Bruce if there was anything he could help him with, and Bruce supposed he had done something right at least.


End file.
